resources for solving the issue of bad-faith questions?

Submitted by twovests in just_post

when i was like, a 16-year old egg and hangin out in the just_post IRC, i had a bunch of 'stupid' questions about feminism and about being trans and whatnot

i really appreciate those who talked with me and answered my questions like "so is it possible for a horse to be transgender"

and looking back, a lot of my questions were indecipherable from "troll questions" that are asked to waste time, spread rhetoric, and identify ways to make someone (and their beliefs) look stupid

and in retrospect, it's not feasible to identify bad-faith from good-faith. it'd probably be better to have some kind of wiki or database of answers

so the next time someone says "so is it possible for a horse to be transgender", the answer is "not really, here's why: https://crouton.net/"

but trans people and trolls have been on the internet for awhile so some good resources may exist. does anyone know of some good collections of such resources?

4

Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

emma wrote

so is it possible for a horse to be transgender

well now i need to know the answer to this as well

3

neku wrote

so the next time someone says "so is it possible for a horse to be transgender", the answer is "not really, here's why: https://crouton.net/"

it's true

3

twovests OP wrote

note: i am actually a long-con bad-faith troll trying to get everyone to make a wiki of arguments and explanations, but disagreements over these will sow discord and division in our community

2

flabberghaster wrote

I don't have an answer but I was the same way tbh. I didn't really know anything about trans stuff and didn't know any trans people that I knew of so I had a lot of pretty questionable questions and pre conceived notions that I'm glad people put up with as I learned about it.

2

Moonside wrote

You might enjoy Embrace The Void podcast episode on cheap talk.

I think the closest thing to a good answer would have to deal with discourse norms. Putting some boundaries for asking questions is arguably good, actually, if the goal is to foster some kind of understanding. Especially if the norms are set up so that every answer must be up to a demanding standard, an easy way to try to control the discourse is just asking questions, since it's a cheap tactic.

With teens though, you probably should cut some slack. Growing up in a bullshit world necessarily leads to bullshitting in the people growing up.

2